Mizner Decision Is Today

Cra To Discuss Jacobson's Plan

December 12, 1994|By SARAH RAGLAND Staff Writer

BOCA RATON - — For city officials, the question is this: Just how much do you want a Jacobson's department store in Mizner Park?

The Community Redevelopment Agency is expected to come up with an answer today, when the commissioners decide if they will accept developer Tom Crocker's proposal to build an 80,000-square-foot department store in the southeastern end of Mizner Park.

If the CRA approves the deal, it will go to the City Council for its review.

Crocker needs one thing from the city: permission to build on a tract that includes a 70-foot by 240-foot strip of public land.

Crocker is paying the city $700,000 a year for part of the property, which is now vacant. He wants the extra land next to it with no strings attached.

"That land is not useful to anyone else," Crocker said on Friday.

"What are they going to do, throw horseshoes there?''

But the Federation of Boca Raton Homeowners Associations, an umbrella group for 24 homeowner associations in the city, thinks Crocker should make concessions to get that land.

In a 15-2 vote taken last week, the federation said that city officials should approve the Jacobson's deal providing Crocker & Co. meets several conditions, including:

-- Agreeing to pay for the maintenance of Mizner Park, which costs as much as $500,000 a year. Under the terms of the city's agreement with Crocker, the city will start paying for maintenance on Jan. 1.

-- Agreeing to provide to the city an annual certified statement of Mizner Park's net operating income, so that city officials can better predict and plan for Mizner Park's financial future.

Crocker said, in short, that the federation is asking too much, particularly since he is building the department at his expense.

"With all due respect, if people understood all the facts, they'd agree this is a good deal for the city and for Crocker & Co.," he said.

CRA staffers seem to agree with Crocker.

Bob George, a CRA consultant, enumerated the benefits of the deal:

It will create $63,000 in annual tax revenues that will help the city pay back the money borrowed to develop Mizner Park; it will help ensure that Crocker doesn't default on the $700,000 annual rent he is paying for the vacant land; it will stabilize and perhaps increase the rents paid by other retailers, a boon because the city will get 15 percent of Mizner Park's net income starting as soon as 1999.

"You have to keep in mind, other cities, like Delray Beach, would spend millions to get Jacobson's," CRA Executive Director Jorge Camejo said. "Everyone wants to beat up Tom Crocker, but if this was Joe Schmo, and he said `Give me 70 feet and I'll build a department store," people would probably say yes."